The boomer curse unleashed

And that's the good news. Beggaring government is the least of the damage that we baby boomers intend to inflict over the next 30 or 40 years. What we're really up to is something more diabolical. Our generation is going to do what our generation has always done best. We're going to shape the American social fabric to our will and make the entire nation conform to our ideals, judgments, and tastes. It will be like the Clinton administration but much, much worse. (An interesting little irony since in '08 we're probably going to get a Clinton administration that's much, much worse.) "Generation Vex: the (really) long goodbye of the Baby Boomers Weekly Standard

Graduates burdened by exorbitant student loans

Many in the next generation of workers will be so debt-burdened they will have to delay home purchases, limit vacations, even eat out less to pay loans off on time. Kristin Cole, 30, who graduated from Michigan State University's law school and lives in Grand Rapids, Mich., owes $150,000 in private and government-backed student loans. Her monthly payment of $660, which consumes a quarter of her take-home pay, is scheduled to jump to $800 in a year or so, confronting her with stark financial choices. "I could never buy a house. I can't travel; I can't do anything," she said. "I feel like a prisoner." "High-Priced Student Loans Spell Trouble" Associated Press

The death rattle of boomer liberalism

Thus, the people who are the public voice of American liberalism rarely have any real connection to the ordinary working people whose interests they putatively champion. They tend instead to be well-off, college-educated yuppies from California or the East Coast, and hard as they try to worry about food stamps or veterans’ rights or securing federal assistance for heating oil bills, they invariably gravitate instead to things that actually matter to them – like the slick Al Gore documentary on global warming, or the “All Things Considered” interview on NPR with the British author of Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook. They haven’t yet come up with something to replace the synergy of patrician and middle-class interests that the New Deal represented. "The American Left's Silly Victim Complex" Ad Busters

The (Anti) Freedom Generation: an open letter to boomers

Your generation is owed even more thanks for its total failure to do away with the war on drugs over the past three decades. Your generation’s monstrous consumption of drugs in the 1960’s is simply too well known to need recounting, but you fortunately came to your senses in the 1980’s and did nothing to stop the government’s merciless persecution of younger generations of drug consumers. Few indeed have been the Boomers who have fought for drug legalization since the 60’s. While this may at first glance appear to be yet another instance of the most vile form of hypocrisy imaginable, we younger generations don’t view your silence and indifference in that way. On the contrary, we thank you for your silence while hundreds of thousands from our generations are carted away to prison for consuming the very same substances your generation grew famous for, because this has given us a giant and glorious police state that is required for these persecutions. If only you had managed to create even more police and prisons! Future generations will undoubtedly thank yours for standing idly by while the government of the United States violently persecuted your own children and your children’s children for doing the same things you did in the 60’s. Three more cheers for the indifferent silence of the reformed druggie Boomers! "Dear Baby Boomers of America" LRC

Naked boomer greed overshadows Iraq debacle

Operation Iraqi Freedom, it turns out, was never a war against Saddam ­Hussein's Iraq. It was an invasion of the federal budget, and no occupying force in history has ever been this efficient. George W. Bush's war in the Mesopotamian desert was an experiment of sorts, a crude first take at his vision of a fully privatized American government. In Iraq the lines between essential government services and for-profit enterprises have been blurred to the point of absurdity -- to the point where wounded soldiers have to pay retail prices for fresh underwear, where modern-day chattel are imported from the Third World at slave wages to peel the potatoes we once assigned to grunts in KP, where private companies are guaranteed huge profits no matter how badly they fuck things up. "The Great Iraq Swindle" Rolling Stone

LTE: Blame the selfish boomers!

The seeds planted 40 years ago by a generation of self-serving brats have morphed into the cesspool we wade in today. Previous generations will be remembered for bestowing to the future the gifts of liberty, patriotism and self-sacrifice. Your generation's motto — sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll— is the sum of your meager contribution. We see the unintended consequences of allowing a generation of malcontents, who were handed the keys to the city on a silver platter, to rule the roost. "It Got This Way Because Of Selfish Baby Boomers" The Day

Hasn't Woodstock always been for sale?

They have tried to be good conservators: For more than a decade, beginning around the 25th anniversary in 1994, they held Woodstock "reunions" that drew musicians and a few hundred to a few thousand spectators, who camped on their 40-hectare homestead for the three days in August near the anniversary dates of Aug. 15, 16 and 17. But they are getting older. They have had a long-running conflict with the town about permits and no-camping rules. And for a host of other reasons, they are ready to sell the house and retire to Arizona. They are asking $8 million (U.S.). And at that price, they are not adding any stipulation requiring new owners to open the property to future reunions. "Woodstock's nostalgic farmland up for sale" The Star

Boomer recovery zombies prey on teens

Kristen, now 26, said that for eight years, she was "passed along" from one middle-aged male leader of Midtown to another. She said her sponsor urged her to have sex with Quinones -- widely known as Mike Q. -- as a way to solidify her sobriety and spiritual revival. Kristen, who spoke on the condition that her last name not be used in keeping with AA traditions, also recalled helping to persuade other teenage girls to sleep with older men in the group. "Seeking Recovery, Finding Confusion" Washington Post

Boomer volunteers: what's in it for ME?

"Boomers are far more interested in volunteering than they're given credit for," Baldwin said. "They're far more interested in using their career and non-career-related skills. They have higher expectations for their volunteer experiences than some of the younger users we're sampling." But many can't find an outfit that engages the full range of their interests, skills and life experience, he said. As more boomers enter retirement age that could bode poorly for nonprofits unless they learn how to provide opportunities that pay off in high volunteer satisfaction. "Boomers Find Obstacles To Volunteer Success" Marketwatch

The price of hypocrisy: Aussie pols struggle with youthful pot use

The main reason we hear so many marijuana confessions these days is that baby boomers rule the world. The children of the '60s survived and thrived, man. They emerged dazed from the smoky haze, and took control of the levers. So now the electorate must suffer as boomer pollies tell us that, yes, they smoked pot, and did a few things in their golden youth they shouldn't have, but it's time for everyone to grow up. Drugs are bad, m'kay. Spare us. To ask boomer politicians if they ever smoked pot is a bit like asking them if they ever dug the Doors. The answer is probably yes, but who really cares? "Why Weed Out Every Pot-Toking Pollie?" The Age (Australia)